The State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Jiangsu Engineering Research Center for MicroRNA Biology and Biotechnology, School of Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China

Abstract

Background

The mitochondrion is an essential organelle which plays important roles in diverse
biological processes, such as metabolism, apoptosis, signal transduction and cell
cycle. Characterizing protein-protein interactions (PPIs) that execute mitochondrial
functions is fundamental in understanding the mechanisms underlying biological functions
and diseases associated with mitochondria. Investigations examining mitochondria are
expanding to the system level because of the accumulation of mitochondrial proteomes
and human interactome. Consequently, the development of a database that provides the
entire protein interaction map of the human mitochondrion is urgently required.

Results

InterMitoBase provides a comprehensive interactome of human mitochondria. It contains
the PPIs in biological pathways mediated by mitochondrial proteins, the PPIs between
mitochondrial proteins and non-mitochondrial proteins as well as the PPIs between
mitochondrial proteins. The current version of InterMitoBase covers 5,883 non-redundant
PPIs of 2,813 proteins integrated from a wide range of resources including PubMed,
KEGG, BioGRID, HPRD, DIP and IntAct. Comprehensive curations have been made on the
interactions derived from PubMed. All the interactions in InterMitoBase are annotated
according to the information collected from their original sources, GenBank and GO.
Additionally, InterMitoBase features a user-friendly graphic visualization platform
to present functional and topological analysis of PPI networks identified. This should
aid researchers in the study of underlying biological properties.

Conclusions

InterMitoBase is designed as an integrated PPI database which provides the most up-to-date
PPI information for human mitochondria. It also works as a platform by integrating
several on-line tools for the PPI analysis. As an analysis platform and as a PPI database,
InterMitoBase will be an important database for the study of mitochondria biochemistry,
and should be particularly helpful in comprehensive analyses of complex biological
mechanisms underlying mitochondrial functions.